6 ms·
I started an e-commerce brand on a Shopify site. I swore to myself I would never put up one of those stupid things that pops up "Someone bought X product an hou
by idopmstuff 1mo ago
I started an e-commerce brand on a Shopify site. I swore to myself I would never put up one of those stupid things that pops up "Someone bought X product an hour ago!" messages in the corner of the screen.
I ended up trying it. Boosted conversion rate meaningfully. Worth the price I pay in mild self-loathing.
Chesterton's popup, I guess.
- frantathefranta 1mo agoOut of all the annoying website things, always thought that one was pretty tame. Almost feels like a spiritual successor to the visit-o-meter. Obviously as long is it doesn't put a (1) on my tab or makes a noise and doesn't steal mouse focus.
- rao-v 1mo agoGenuine curiosity - is the pop up vaguely factual or sort of randomly generated?
- m4tthumphrey 1mo agoAlways randomly generated!
- xXSLAYERXx 1mo agoGosh, I always assumed they were factual. Now I'm wondering the factualness of the old "15 people have this in their shopping cart" and "This is a popular item - limited stock left".
- GreenWatermelon 1mo agoI always assume they're lies. In fact, I default to assuming every marketing tactic purely presents lies and the goal is to get my money by any means possible.
- idopmstuff 1mo agoEntirely factual. It's "Someone from <city> bought <product> <period of time since purchase> ago!" with a picture of the product. All purchases are real.
- m4tthumphrey 1mo agoThis is not in the same sport let alone league as the things demoed in OP.
- agumonkey 1mo agoIs there a law of society / business where everything we hate is on average something that made the society able to function ? it's similar to chesterton but it's not a fence, it's the tree we live on.
- account42 1mo agoGoing to "let's some participants extract more than their fare share" to "makes society function" is quite of a stretch.
- LollipopYakuza 1mo agoThis reminds me the clickbail title and thumbnail on YouTube. One of my favorite channel apologized for it but explained that the difference compared to NOT doing this is phenomenal and they can't afford stopping.
- ivanjermakov 1mo agoDon't get me started on "like and subscribe".
- inigyou 1mo agoSponsorblock can be configured to skip these.
- olyjohn 1mo agoIf this is the only way to get people to watch your videos, maybe your channel sucks. But glad you are making money tricking people into wasting their time so you can get one more ad impression.
- inigyou 1mo agoSo every channel sucks?
- debugnik 1mo agoSounds like you've let your feed fill with shitty channels, but no, not all channels do this. I mostly refuse to watch videos with those cringe clickbait thumbnails, and I've still got more stuff to watch that I've got time for. And it's mostly gaming and variety streamers, or music/animation artists; not serious stuff. Now, I'll grant you that these may not become as successful as the clickbaity ones. Then again, the latter channels might as well not exist to me and like-minded people. Just an hour ago I unfollowed a streamer precisely because he's been getting clickbaity. We've got to take some responsibility over the people we choose to watch.
- ryandrake 1mo agoThat's the real problem. Being aggressively annoying works. Dark patterns work. Popups that grab your attention work. Flashing text conveying urgency works. Thumbnails with open-mouth YouTube-face work. Moving buttons around so people mis-click works. Tiny [X] buttons that make people accidentally click an ad work. You're never going to convince someone to stop doing something that is making them money.
- gigatree 1mo agoAbsolutely. Maybe the answer is that everyone should just rank them up to 11 until it stops working and then people have to get creative again.
- toyg 1mo agoThe tech field is increasingly devoid of any resemblance of morality. I guess it's the inevitable parable of anything started by '70s hippies: sooner or later, we all sell out.
- theappsecguy 1mo agoI think most fields are like that..?
- inigyou 1mo agoThe entire system of capitalism is like that, and the system is shutting down the parts that aren't like that, and replacing them with ones that are.
- vovavili 1mo agoLeaving money on the table is never easy.
- wakamoleguy 1mo agoOn the extreme side, things like blackmail and fraud are generally illegal, even if they can make you money. Most of these dark patterns that "work" tend to follow a similar pattern: by taking advantage of the target, one can extract more money from them. I would possibly be a terrible salesperson, because these all give me the ick. Your product should provide an offer of genuine value.
- bigbuppo 1mo agoI actually kind of like those, though I've always been suspicious that those events are fabricated because that's the sort of thing marketing people would do.
- mikestew 1mo agoI got one of those on Etsy not long ago: “only one left!” Fuck off with your FOMO, Etsy, there’s plenty left. Five minutes later, “add to cart”. Etsy: “sold out; we weren’t lying!” So in this particular case it didn’t work. But it will next time.
- inigyou 1mo agoClear cookies and try again. But better yet, boycott Etsy.
- apple4ever 1mo agoYes but a small popup I. The corner is different than a dickover. I don't think what you did is bad at all.
- andrewflnr 1mo agoIf it's not a lie, then yeah, that's pretty mild.
- xandrius 1mo agoThe price you pay should definitely be higher then.
- sharts 1mo agoPressuring works. But some is distasteful, tho legal as discovered via MeToo
- account42 1mo agoMaybe just cut to the chase and just go straight to stealing if profit is the only motivation that matters.